Former Fiji Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama has been given a 12-month suspended prison sentence by the Fiji High Court in Suva, local news media reports say.

Bainimarama, 71, was found guilty of “making an unwarranted demand with menace” on October 2. The court found he used his position as Prime Minister in 2021 to pressure the country’s then-Acting Police Commissioner Rusiate Tudravu into sacking two officers.

He is the first person in Fiji to be convicted under this specific offence.

The former military commander and coup leader had pleaded not guilty. However, High Court Judge Thushara Rajasinghe found him guilty of making an unwarranted demand to a public official under Fiji’s Crimes Act.

The maximum penalty for this charge is 12 years’ imprisonment. Bainimarama was sentenced to 12 months in prison and suspended for three years — meaning he will not go to jail unless he recommits the offence within that period.

Bainimarama resigned from Parliament in March 2023 after receiving a three-year suspension for sedition.

In a separate case, he was jailed in May last year for perverting the course of justice in a case related to him blocking a police investigation involving the University of the South Pacific in 2021.

He was released from prison in November 2024 — six months into his one-year sentence — following a comprehensive review by the Fiji Corrections Service.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

French Polynesia’s pro-independence leader and mayor of Faa’a, Oscar Temaru, has been held for questioning over the funding of his defence in a 2019 trial.

Tahiti-infos reports that he and deputy mayor Robert Maker were questioned for six hours.

This comes amid an investigation into alleged abuse of public funds because the Faa’a Council had paid for Temaru’s defence.

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He had been convicted of exerting undue influence and was given a suspended prison sentence as well as a US$50,000 fine.

The conviction will be appealed and is due to be heard in court in August.

As part of the probe into the defence spending in 2020, the prosecution ordered the seizure of Temaru’s personal savings of US$100,000.

The investigation is now under the control of a special trans-regional jurisdiction in Paris specialising in financial fraud, since the start of 2022, due to the complexity of the case.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.